13 Aug 15. Taiwan Unveils its Biggest UAS. Taiwan unveiled the prototype of its largest ever military drone on Wednesday as it seeks to boost its defence forces in the face of a perceived threat from China.
The sleek, grey unmanned aircraft is designed for intelligence gathering and surveillance missions, according to the National Chung Shan Institute of Science and Technology (CSIST), an arm of the Ministry of National Defence that is developing the drone.
It is more than twice the size of any of the existing fleet of 32 “Sharp Kite” drones used by Taiwanese forces.
“Our research and development capabilities are definitely not inferior (to China’s),” said Ma Wan-june, director of the aeronautical systems research division at CSIST.
Ma did not say when the prototype is to be put into use or give any further specifications.
“It’s equipped for automatic takeoff and landing, communications, optical detection, among others,” Ma said.
The drone was shown to reporters ahead of the biennial Taipei Aerospace and Defence Technology Exhibition which starts Thursday and is open to the public.
Self-governing Taiwan split from mainland China in 1949 after a civil war. But Beijiing still sees the island as part of its territory and does not rule out force to achieve reunification at some stage.
According to Taiwan’s defence ministry, China has more than 1,500 ballistic and cruise missiles trained on the island.
(Source: UAS VISION/The Express Tribune)
13 Aug 15. Global Hawk demos multi-user control. The RQ-4 Global Hawk has demonstrated more flexible mission management systems that allow more than one user to control the UAV.
“During a series of high-altitude, long-endurance RQ-4 Global Hawk demonstrations, the UAS seamlessly responded to external requests to dynamically alter its route of flight and sensor functionality, thereby breaking the one-user to one-vehicle paradigm,” said a Northrop Grumman news release.
This was accomplished without changes to the UAV’s software. The demonstration, under the Air Force’s Common Mission Control Center (CMCC) program, saw the Global Hawk “interfaced to the CMCC using the UAS C2 Initiative (UCI) message set, which is an emerging standard that enables interoperability across multiple weapon systems,” Northrop Grumman said.
“Northrop Grumman’s Control Mission Management System [CMMS] team is proud to contribute to the standardization of command and control systems for multiple UAS,” said CMMS program director Michael Leahy. “Our customers’ advanced intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance requirements call for modern ground control systems based on emerging standards that can be used across air vehicle platforms – that’s what we strive to deliver.” (Source: C4ISR & Networks)